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Chicago Links School Cameras To Police
Farakin brings us a story about how cameras in roughly 200 Chicago schools are being connected to police headquarters and the city's 911 emergency center. The goal of the effort is to "consolidate video surveillance," and it will involve both routine monitoring and real-time updates to officers on their way to a crisis. According the the Chicago Tribune, "The mayor acknowledged the cameras provide only limited security, citing a spate of shootings in recent days that have claimed young victims during after-school hours." The story also contains a video in which Mayor Daley indicated that he expects the cameras to serve as a deterrent now that people know they're under the eye of the police.
Remember, Big Brother is watching.
I predict nothing will come of this but a bunch of kids getting in trouble for flicking off the cameras. Or maybe someone will get creative and steal some of the cameras, now that would be awesome.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
How about taking some of the Homeland Security money and putting it into alternate crime prevention programs, instead of trying to deal with situations where kids have already been turned into criminals?
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
There needs to be a cause and effect for a government to justify this. In other words, this makes sense to fight crime in schools as these are inner city schools we're talking about but do we really expect inner city schools to be as bad as they are forever? There should be a clause advocating the removal of the cameras if the situation has improved for a long duration of time (say 2 years?). Otherwise it really does start a 1984 society and that's not good.
How many reading teachers could have been hired for the price of those cameras? This is sad, just sad.
I'm glad I got out of high school just before they started all this crap in the name of safety. I can just imagine a cop sitting at the monitors panning the camera as teenage ass passes by.
Where would we be if big brother wasn't here to protect us from our selves? --- a lot more free thats for sure.
The system of putting cameras everywhere so people will know they're being watched is working so well in England.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
TFA doesn't once mention recording. Wouldn't that mean that the video isn't admissable as evidence and thus, unless the crime's still being perpetrated when the police get there, useless for most situations?
For all the paranoid privacy freaks instead of the realistic people, do you really think the cops are going to just sit there and watch high schoolers walk by from miles away? Like they have time. They do seem to imply that the cops can view it from their car on the way to the place if a crime takes place. If that's the case, yeah they could just sit there while taking radar and tune into it. But then just make it only be able to be be accessed when it's "unlocked" from the HQ. Tada, problem solved.
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Isn't adding surveillance to monitor a group a punishment of said group? One student flips out and goes on a killing spree, therefore all other students need to be monitored from now on -- that seems like a treatment, not a cure, for the problem.
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
I'm more concerned with the idiots that allowed this to happen in their school districts.
"Want to put up security cameras on our property? SURE!"
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
I think the intresting bit is at the end of the story, 50 police officers were to be hired, but budget reasons (cuts?) led to a delay of a full month before they could start training. Meanwhile a program to get cops on the beat and civilians to do the paper work was also delayed, again seemingly because of budget reasons.
Note that it is purely MY speculation that the budget reasons were cuts, but it is hard to imagine how for instance an increase in budget would cause a delay.
There is actually a rather neat trick that you can pull with this. I announce a new plan to hire 50 cops. Nice headline, people feel good about it. Delays are caused and the program is scaled back. Sometime later I announce that 40 cops have been hired. Nice headline, people feel good about it, 90 new cops on the beat... AHA! You spotted it eh?
If I am really good I also silenty get rid of 60 cops and score another headline NOT with the firing but with the budget savings I have been managing. Ain't I good, can you guess how the next election will go?
The problem is simple, you need to follow the news in depth and keep on a story and anything that might relate to it. For instance the increased budget for the DHS from which this camera system is payed, where does that money come from? Could it even be that the reason the budget office did not have the money for civilian office workers and the new cops was because the money went to the DHS instead?
But people hate in depth reporting, note how many people here scream bloody murder when a new development in SCO is reported or shout DUPE when an article is really an update. For many people news is what is happening now, but for a crafty politician that leads to an easy way to pull the wool over everyone's eye.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
So, slippery slopes don't exist and only tinfoil hatters believe in them? Right?
Morons. Giving your rights and freedoms away like it was candy.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Would a group of students wasting the police's resources by staging some convincing (and likely quite humorous) staged incidents indicate to people who little protection camera systems like these would provide? Or, perhaps a female student who may be prematurely displaying the signs of puberty could be the focus of the same camera everyday due to her class schedule? These sort of things are prone to more abuse than they are to help, and I can guarantee that I'd have cracked up some particularly hilarious pranks to pull on a school camera system, if one were present at my high school.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
The school district added cameras and DVR's a few years ago and recently added the ability for the police to tap into the system in the case of a 911 call or triggered burglar alarm. From what the school district said at meetings, it sounds like the police cannot legally tap into the signal at will, only when there is an emergency call initiated. That doesn't mean the police won't peek (we have some questionable police officers in town) but I think they have better things to do with their time.
Getting beyond the school shootings scenario, the biggest problem at schools in our area is vandalism. Students sneak into the building, trash classrooms, equipment, the athletic field, etc. Now the DVR will record them, and if the alarm is triggered the police view the video feed to learn where they are in the school, how many there are, and if they are armed.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
Damn those convenience stores, supermarkets, gas stations, banks, schools, etc., for invading my privacy just so they can catch a few crooks. I mean, it's not like I'm on their property or anything.
If they put us all in prison now, there would be no crime! No expensive cameras to install, lucritive contracts to the prison industry. I don't see a downside!
What once was unthinkable will become commonplace. The first few years, kids will rebel, maybe even take down a camera or two, obscure its picture, that sort of thing. Given enough time, the kids are sufficiently inured to the cameras, and they wont even see them anymore.
Kids that dont notice cameras will grow to be adults that dont notice cameras. Thats the whole point of this exercise. Get em while their young.
It can be go tiem now plees?
They're not tackling the root cause of why they're having to do this. The fact is that an awful lot of kids in school in the US can get very easy access to weapons that allow them to kill people very easily. As long as the US at large is OK with accepting that kind of risk, and public anxiety quickly dies down after every shooting, then trying to half-heartedly try and film everything that people do is quite simply pointless.
It's also no deterrent at all. We've seen from the vast majority of shootings that those involved are quite willing to shoot first, and then shoot themselves so that there are no consequences. The notion that cameras are going to be a deterrent is well wide of the mark.
In the UK we call that small a number of cameras "freedom".
I can't wait for some TEACHER to get busted doing something inappropriate on camera and then the teachers union will demand these camera's be removed as an invasion of the teacher privacy.
Or perhaps the parents will demand access to the feeds so they can monitor their own kids, and open a whole new can of worms. Once the technology is in place, its only natural that the parents should take an interest in monitoring their own kids education. What good parent wouldn't? And I'm sure all sorts of unexpected 'interesting' things would come out of the woodwork... sexual harrassment incidents, inappropriate teacher behaviour, bullying,... all sorts of stuff the kids almost never come forward with on display in plain sight for the parents... what a riot that would be.
Once again school kids without rights are being exposed and desensitized to horrible human rights abuses they will learn to accept as "normal" when they become adults. The sickening jackbooted dehumanization of America marches on.
+0 Meh
The real tragedy is that the alderman in high crime areas latch onto the cameras and want them everywhere, despite the fact it reduces the funding to put cops on patrol there, which unlike the cameras, actually reduces crime. In this case, it sounds like they are at least reducing the cost of a rather pointless venture. As far as I am aware, the cameras have led to no arrests.
Anyone have any details on how they're implementing this? I'd love to know what servers they're using, the details on the networking required for the feeds, the way they structure the observation room (one person can only effectively watch a certain number of feeds, I've heard 60ish from one vendor, i think it's higher but not much).
D
closed minded is as closed minded does
Why are you blaming this on the teachers when all of the problems you mentioned are the result of policies set by the school board and inflexibly enforced by the administration. A fair number of teachers do overlook the stupid rules, and even if they don't it's not their fault that the punishment for them is ridiculously out of proportion.
Tell me, this cannot be!
We certainly need more surveillance for the bereaved to watch their loved one's last moments. Too bad that over 90% of surveillance in the most CCTV happy state can't be used to tell anything more than that something bad happened when the police are reminded.
We need a DNA database of everybody. That way you can be proven innocent!
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Let's face it: American system is so fucked up beyond belief that we must have cameras in schools. Don't like it? Find a private school for your ankle biter and STFU. I remember studying in Soviet Russia where kids fell into two categories: The ones who kicked ass (literally) and the ones who got the sorry end of that stick (but only for a short period of time). Eventually, things worked out pretty well because bullies always got what they deserved and normal kids learned how to stand up for themselves (or change schools). If there was an annoying kid calling your mother a whore, you could get up during the class, punch the a-hole in the mouth and go back to your desk. Of course, you'd see the principal later on, but overall things were okay. Once you kicked some ass, people would typically not touch you at all. Kids who had notoriously bad habits learned to keep their mouths shut quite fast. Is this my idea of a perfect school? Of course not. Is it better than what we have in the U.S.? I think so. The problem that we have here is that kids are never given any opportunity to stand up for themselves. If a bully is picking on you, you can't just kick the kid in the balls and flush his face down the toilet w/o facing some serious charges. In Soviet Russia, you could simply say "Look, he shook up my younger brother for lunch money and I stepped in." Most of the principals would tell you not to do it again and let you go, especially if you were a good student who did a right thing. Not in the U.S. There are fucking rules that you must obey and even if you did a wrong thing for a right reason, you'll pay. And so we breed pussies until the point where some clown decides to bring a nine to school and spray some bullets to show people who is who. Spent $500 at Wal-Mart and you're a fucking Rambo! What should we do about it? Should we let school shootings happen here and there and accept some collateral damage? Should we finally scratch the whole system and start from scratch? I don't advertise violence by any means, but as I can see it now we either have to get cameras or let our kids be kids and accept politically incorrect statements and random acts of minor violence. If more kids can stand up for themselves in a case-by-case basis, nobody would get so freaking pissed of a turn into an A-bomb.
Farakin brings us a story about how cameras in roughly 200 Chicago schools are being connected directly to the parents of the children by the intelligent sensing of their implanted RDIF tags. The goal of the effort is to "consolidate video surveillance," and it will involve both routine monitoring and real-time updates to parents on their way to a crisis. Especially for the children who have had a history of trouble.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
I know it sounds crazy in the land of the free, but how about not selling guns to anyone who doesn't REALLY need them ?
And don't give me the bs that they would find a way to get the gun anyway. If school shooters knew how to get contraband they'd get drugs and would be chilling out watching dogs wearing hats on wide-angle camera instead of shooting people.
And when the cameras don't stop shootings, what next? RFID tags? GPS trackers?
It's the guns, stupid!
Chicago is going to link 4,500 school cameras to police districts, squad cars, and the 911 emergency center. This Sun-Times notes that the existing network includes more than 10,000 public and private cameras. So this means, the 911 center will be capable of monitoring 15,000 cameras. The half million dollar upgrade will be paid for with Homeland Security funds.
School cameras go from cameras viewable only by school security to cameras viewable by 911 dispatchers, squad cars, and police districts. The article notes that the cameras will be accessible only when needed (whatever that means).
15,000 cameras is enormous. I am really curious about the technical infrastructure to integrate those feed and archive them.
There are a whole host of issues with cameras in schools, a previous post on cameras in NYC schools considers some of them.
Update: I confirmed the 10,000 cameras with Fran Spielman, the Sun-Times reporter. "The 10,000 figure includes CTA, airport, city, Park District, McCormick Place cameras, as well as private cameras hooked up to the city network."
http://www.rajivshah.com/camera/archives/2008/03/chicago_to_expa.html
is paved with good intentions.
And a few cans of spray paint can cure many ills.
It's not the kids, not the teachers, not the public, its the security camera company. And its not only a contract to put the cameras in schools, they are sprouting up at many corners of the city, to make more revenue since the city is pretty much broke, yet they spend money in this camera system. So far this system gave me two tickets for "moving violations" that a cop would have not cared about. The damage? 100 dollars each. Some one is making sure to get a nice contract to this company.
Elected officials and people who are paid from taxpayers' money work FOR US. We are their employers. We have every right to know what they're doing at work, where they are during the work day, and what drugs they're taking.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Friend of mine said in Ohio that the crazy drug users would get the police officers to chase them on foot while their buds would steal the shotguns from their cars to sell.
These cameras will give a false sense of security to some, and total useless to victims other than to maybe prove something after the fact. "Ya he got the S*** beat out of him for sure" or "ya he got stabbed, and we cant tell who it is in that hoodie" There is no replacement for having security where its needed, and not where its not.
It's impossible to explain to someone who hasn't worked with Chicago Public Schools (CPS) or an equally corrupt public school system how fast this will be used for corrupt, ill-thought out and simply evil reasons.
I met some of the most corrupt sick people I have ever met in my life when I worked as an IT manager for a CPS school. Not the other IT people, they were quite amazing; but the upper administration of CPS and a great deal of the teacher's unions.
There will be shitloads of blackmail
The schools will become even more authoritarian and foster orwellian thinking ie "I don't see why it's so bad for there to be cameras everywhere, that's how it is in school" (not arguing the point here, I it won't work like this on everyone, but the fact that it will screw over more people is obscene).
Chicago Public Schools will become more like prisons than they already are. These schools and the way they're run do not foster learning at all (at least 99% of CPS schools) but encourage obedience, fear, and learning the "right" information. You want to know why something is the way it is or question an assumption as I student? I've seen brilliant students arguing their points with immense skill receive very low grades simply for disagreeing with a point of dogma for a particular teacher (case in point, Keynesian vs Austrian economics).
These last bits I saw when I attended a CPS school before working for one (dear sweet god, never again).
Daley doesn't care what happens in Chicago as long as he gets re-elected. The whole Daley dynasty in Chicago is essentially like that, look them up on Wikipedia and the references if you don't believe me. Richard M Daley, Richard J Daley. (it's 3 AM where I am...you get no link)
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
I thought so. None of you have any clue about what your are talking about. Smoke, blowing. The result of this? Nothing. Do you think for a minute that the police monitors will actually see anything relevant, real time? Not likely. Perhaps a few kids taking too long on their bathroom break. Kids being kids. Kids will have camera placement figured out within a week anyway, and will avoid the cameras. Or else stage shows for the cameras. Same thing, really. And forget all the uproar over the police monitoring your precious 8th graders (more Internet posturing), as the police and the schools are two arms of the same creature. I work in education and know that monitoring kids with cameras is the least of our worries. You should spend more time worrying about NCLB or what science curriculum is currently being taught.
Actually, you have to understand the situation here in Chicago. Even in the semi rural and isolated 10th Congressional district (Waukegan), there are literally hundreds of gang members in the area. Any edge the police can get helps protect students. It is a lot worse in the city proper.
If you treat kids like criminals, don't be surprised when they start acting like criminals.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
But not in that way.
Why not fight the cameras with a "OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!1!" campaign?
After all, if the cameras are in school, they'll be taking pictures of young kids. What's to prevent those pictures EVER falling in the hands of big bad child molsters?
Isn't that why they're banning camera phones, cameras etc from parrent attended events in school? If so, why the fuck should live feeds be allowed?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
I wonder if they use Orwell's 1984 in any of their English classes in Chicago?
I wonder what percent of Americans have read it?
An armed society is a polite society. A watched society is an enslaved society.
You allow early retirement, don't replace those who leave and don't expand as the city the police works in expands. Simple stuff.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
They aren't adding cameras, the cameras have been there for a while. "Until now, they have been monitored only at the Board of Education's central office." Big Brother has been there all along, It's just a different set of eyes. "Routine monitoring will occur on cameras mounted outside buildings, with viewing of images from cameras inside the schools only during emergencies"
Stopping school shootings is all good, but (a) there are ways to do it that don't involve methods that could theoretically limit freedom of expression, and (b) I highly doubt somebody that plans to shoot up a school is going to be deterred by the fact that s/he might be seen by the police while shooting it up.
They might as well require new school uniforms as well: orange jumpsuits.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?